Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann

The main character, Eveline's mother is an English professor somewhere in coastal New York. Eveline's name comes from The Dubliners; which explains the lengthy prose and overly-adequate descriptions of the minutiae of daily existence. Like Murakami, the author allows us to completely inhabit the sometimes overly-sensitive skin of an adolescent girl."...I always figured he was like a body without skin, and he had to sort of desensitize himself. I didn't mind the way he predicted his own disappointment, calling everything pointless and existence senseless. I just figured it was a way to protect himself, to build, like, a shell..."I could go on and on about the beauty of this book, but I couldn't begin to do justice to the prose by sampling bits here and there for you. All I can say is this one is a whopper, it will suck a month of your life from you, but you will never be sorry to see it go. I wish I could start it over again from the beginning, but there are many other demands on my ocular attention.